Uncle Orson Reviews 1998

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History

Stephen E. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany: June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945 (Simon & Schuster, 1997, 512pp hc $27.50). Ambrose may be the bravest historian around -- he's the man who dared to confess, after writing a Nixon biography, that he actually found much to admire in this man that has served as the ultimate demon of the American intelligentsia. Ambrose goes where the evidence leads him. In this case, however, there was no political minefield to work through. Ambrose was simply investigating the powerful story of the struggle for victory in Europe during World War II, from the common soldiers' point of view, and I must say that I was grateful to have read it before watching Saving Private Ryan, for Ambrose, while he doesn't tell a single heroic story with an emotional focus, makes the whole experience of the war every bit as clear and painful as the film -- and with time to take a broader and deeper look at everything.

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, ed., Russian Traditional Culture: Religion, Gender, and Customary Law (M.E. Sharpe, 1992, 310pp pb $28.95). This was a research tool for Enchantment, so my focus was on articles dealing with the earliest social practices in Russian history.

Eli Barnavi, ed. A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People from the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present (Knopf, 1992, 299pp hc $50). A research tool for Enchantment and Sarah, but fascinating in its own right.

Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 1961/1971, 656pp pb $24.95). A research tool for Enchantment, I found myself compulsively reading on far beyond the period that concerned my book.

John Channon with Rob Hudson, The Penguin Historical Atlas of Russia (Penguin/Viking, 1995, 144pp hc $27.95). A very good historical atlas for its own sake, though of course it was also vital for Enchantment.

John A. Crow, Spain: The Root and the Flower: An Interpretation of Spain and the Spanish People (University of California Press, 1963/1975/1985, 455pp pb). A highly opinionated book that manages to be history, commentary, and guidebook all at once. I read most of it long after having visited Catalonia in fall of 1997, but it made me understand better the things I saw and the people I met, and may be one of the best national histories I've ever read.

Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, trans. Thomas Dunlap (University of Chicago Press, 1992/1996, 455pp pb). Dohrn-van Rossum goes into excruciating detail, but the result is a very clear examination, not only of the development of our contemporary timesense, but also an exploration of the way historians find the answers to questions on which the evidence is limited. He is as much a critic of historians as a practitioner of the art.

Charles Downing, Russian Tales and Legends (Oxford University Press, 1956, 215pp pb Ł4.99). Anyone who reads both this book and Enchantment will understand the great debt I owe to Downing for his clear and compelling presentation of these great old Russian fairy tales.

David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (Harper Torchbooks, 1970, 338pp pb). Fischer, himself an excellent historian whose treatment of the sources of English immigration to the U.S. formed the backbone of my research for Heartfire, in this book pulls no punches as he shreds bad historical practices. Unfortunately, if all his principles were actually followed, I think no history could be written, and perhaps his condemnation of various practices might better have been tempered by a clearer recognition that some personal intrusions are not only unavoidable but inevitable. Still, one does not envy the poor scholars -- and "scholars" -- taken to task in this book, and as a corrective it's a marvelous thing.

Terryl L. Givens, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (Oxford University Press, 1997, 205pp hc). I bought this book expecting to be fascinated by its account of anti-Mormon literature in the 1800s and later; instead, its primary value is as an overview-in-context of the history of the persecution of Mormons in America and their demonization (which continues today, to a degree) in the American press. The history was so thorough and illuminating that when Givens moved into literary analysis, which is always so shaky and insubstantial even at its best, it was a disappointment. Givens does it as honestly as it can be done, but this book makes it clear how flaccid the tools of literary analysis are, compared to the tools of history. It is as if, having driven steel nails into wood with a hammer, he suddenly began trying to drive fresh-cooked pasta through sponges with a baguette.

Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1996, 470pp hc $32.50). More than you ever wanted to know about the depiction of material goods in the art and literature of the renaissance, Jardine's main points are quickly made and then merely elaborated on ad infinitum. I'm glad I read the beginning; I'm glad I skimmed the rest.

Derek Nelson, Off the Map: The Curious Histories of Place-Names (Kodansha International, 1997, 200pp hc $19). This book was a gift, and a good one -- from the title, from the jacket copy, it was the perfect book to give me. Alas, the content was astonishingly ignorant. Egregious errors revealed that Nelson did not have even the vaguest idea of history, so whenever he wrote about things I did not already know, it was impossible to trust him. Both the people who gave me this well-meant gift and I were defrauded by such utter incompetence. The publisher owes us all an apology for having such low standards of publication.

Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton University Press, 1986, 941pp pb). A major source as I was writing Urchin, this essay collection is, of course, only as good as the actual contributors, but I found some of the essays extraordinarily valuable, not just for my purposes as a novelist writing about a military school, but for my purposes as a citizen concerned about the really stupid, self-destructive military and foreign policy our nation is currently pursuing. Not one word of this book is designed to be entertaining, but most of it is valuable indeed, if only to reveal how wrong much military thinking has been, and how devastating the consequences of sheer dumbness can be.

Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Harvard University Press, 1993, 205pp pb). If all feminist scholarship were up to this standard, it would not need the label feminist, for it is simply scholarship at its best. Nothing is ever asserted beyond what the evidence allows; no agenda drives the writer beyond simply discovering how things were for women through out the long history of this ancient kingdom. Research for Sarah, of course, but also it was a pleasure to read for the sheer excellence of the work.

Evelyn Wolfson, From Abenaki to Zuni: A Dictionary of Native American Tribes (Walker, 1988, 215pp pb $10.95). A young-adult treatment of Native American cultures, and a very good one.

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